West Side Story is arguably one of the great trifectas: a timeless love story, a nearperfectmotion picture and a brilliant musical score. This year marks the 50thanniversary of the classic film, based on the hit Broadway musical, and to celebratethe golden year MGM will release a completely restored Blu-ray set in November.But West Side Story deserves a commemoration greater than just a video release,and The Leonard Bernstein Office in New York City had something a little morespecial, a little more daring in mind to celebrate the historic event. As the lastdecade saw orchestra-to-picture tours like John Goberman’s Wizard of Oz showsand Ludwig Wicki and the 21st Century Orchestra’s performances of HowardShore’s Lord of the Rings trilogy become increasingly popular in concert hallsaround the world, Paul Epstein, Senior Vice President at The Leonard BernsteinOffice, saw the perfect opportunity to kick off the 50th anniversary of Bernstein’sbeloved classic with a similar approach, setting his sights on the major orchestras ofLos Angeles, New York and Chicago.What ensued was an exciting and unexpected path of discovery by a team with theintensity and aggressiveness of the Jets and the Sharks combined. The West SideStory project began with a mix of mystery, science, and ultimately love for bothLeonard Bernstein’s score and Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ Oscar-winningfilm.Epstein went to Steve Linder, Senior Vice President and Director of AttractionsDivision at IMG Artists, who is preeminent in producing live orchestra to pictureshows. Linder worked at the Hollywood Bowl for 20 years, serving as Director ofPresentations for a portion of his tenure. He worked tirelessly to bring film music

concerts to the Bowl, incorporating “clip shows,” where film score excerpts wereperformed live to their respective scenes. That history gave him the edge needed tobring the complete West Side Story film to the concert hall. “Here’s the perfect filmwhere the music transcends the concert the hall,” says Linder. “It transcends filmmusic. It transcends any specific genre because it’s Bernstein’s music.”Linder believes West Side Story’s universal appeal to audiences in and out of theconcert hall is the perfect opportunity to bridge both worlds. “Besides the fact thatBernstein’s music transcends classification, I think it’s also a great movie. It is oneof those movies that had a troubled past yet it is a film that is beloved by everyone.It is one of those things where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,although the parts are pretty damn good. So any orchestra approaching it is goingto look at it potentially different from other films. That started a long process ofdiscovery.”For Linder and the Bernstein Office, that process of discovery turned out to be anunexpectedly long and arduous road. Epstein and Linder wanted to have their firstconcert in July with David Newman conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Sowith a loud ticking of the clock at their backs, they rushed to get the necessaryapprovals from MGM. Immediately out of the gate they hit some unwelcomeroadblocks. First they struggled to get the studio’s attention, which at the time wasfluctuating in and out of bankruptcy and had difficulty focusing on the benefit ofstarting such a project. As soon as MGM’s financial situation leveled out and thestudio figured out how to staff such a unique and unexpected production, the Lionsaw the huge promotional opportunity for their upcoming restored Blu-ray releaseof the film. With MGM on board all systems were “go.”But there was one major obstacle: the original score materials didn’t exist. To makematters even worse, just as the original score materials were lost, so were theoriginal mixing stems, leaving only a composite mix of the audio. With thedialogue, music and effects all mixed together, it would be a nightmare to removejust the orchestra from the mix for live musicians to perform.Without hesitation, Linder went to Bob Heiber, Vice President of Audio for ChaceAudio. Chace was instrumental in fully restoring the film’s audio from the newlydiscovered original six-track mix for the 50th Anniversary Blu-ray. Heiber in turnrecommended Paris-based Audionamix, who was testing and perfecting theirproprietary technology on separating sound elements from monophonic audiotracks. Finally, they were in luck!Linder and the Bernstein Office knew they had a long road ahead of them and tookthe leap of faith to find whatever remaining elements existed of Bernstein’s classicscore while attempting to successfully extract the orchestra from the original sixtrackmix.

A Detective Story

Enter Eleonor Sandresky, a New York composer, producer and performer, who alsoserves as the Bernstein Office’s Licensing Associate. Apart from co-founding MATA,a non-profit organization commissioning new works from young composers,Sandresky’s credits include membership in the Phillip Glass Ensemble, where shehas performed and conducted live music to film. Epstein saw the valuable resourceSandresky could provide to the project and recruited her to research and trackdown any of Bernstein’s original film score materials. Since the film’s production was a near-horror story and MGM didn’t have theforesight to see any future uses of the score, the materials became lost. “In thosedays when you would make a film nobody thought about saving music,” Sandreskysays. “In this case, the show already exists. They made it as a Broadway show and itwas never intended to be a movie until it was a huge success. Bernstein was so busywriting one of his big symphonies at the time and he was under a big deadline andhe didn’t have time to work on the film that much. So he sent Sid Ramin and IrwinKostal out to Hollywood with his instructions and they were in touch a lot. But Sidand Irwin did the orchestration and they just made things for scenes. ‘Oh, we needa little extra music here or we need to take some music out there.’ It was a real nipand-tuck type of situation. And nobody thought any more about it. So people whowere savers saved things and people who were not didn’t. MGM went through allthe various incarnations through the years, and at a certain point, when they movedall their materials out to the West Coast, they just got rid of everything. Fifty yearsof film music—it’s just gone. They couldn’t imagine actual performances of filmmusic then. It seemed so arcane.”Sandresky’s first stop in her search: Columbia University. Making the quick tripuptown to Sid Ramin’s collection she luckily found half of the original score invarious forms—piano vocals, some orchestrated with notes in various stages. Withcopies from Ramin’s collection secured, she advanced her search to Irwin Kostal. Sandresky looked into what she could find from the orchestrator’s estate butunfortunately no archives exist. She then trekked to Harvard University toinvestigate the collection of the original conductor/music supervisor Johnny Green.Adding some materials from Green’s collection to what she found at Columbia,Sandresky could see the original score slowly manifesting. But still it was notenough.Sandresky next explored the Library of Congress in D.C. with the hopes of findingsome of the original score mislabeled or misplaced. It really wasn’t until shefocused her search on the West Coast that she struck gold. “We finally found thecomplete short score in Robert Wise’s collection at USC. I didn’t actually believe itwhen the guy said that’s what they had. I thought, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a piano vocalor it’s not going to be the short score.’ When it came in the mail, sure enough it wasthe short score. It was amazing. Right at that time everybody started comingtogether in agreement that this project should go forward. That was in January ofthis year.”Now that all the pieces were coming together, the team was under the realizationthat they had a live concert performance in six months and they needed to move asfast as possible. Sandresky and Bernstein Office Senior Music Editor Garth EdwinSunderland, without hesitation, jumped right in to the reconstruction. Sunderlandwould handle the orchestrations while Sandresky would correctly spot the film.Since the original Oscar-winning orchestrations were too much for a live concertstage, Sunderland needed to improvise. Steve Linder notes the original film had“six pianos and six pianists, and no orchestra is going to hire six pianos and sixpianists to those concerts. So there were some decisions that had to be made aboutmaking it a little more practical in terms of its instrumentation.”“The feeling was that if we stayed close to the orchestrations of the [West SideStory] Symphonic Dances,” Sandresky adds, “that would be closest to Bernstein.With a few additions here and there, that’s essentially what we had.” For reference,Sunderland also used Bernstein’s 1984 opera re-recording with José Carreras andKiri Te Kanawa.Meanwhile, Sandresky continued to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. “I wasputting together, watching the film, figuring out which parts were really in the filmand which parts were not in the film and then scanning each page and collating amockup for them to start. Garth began the actual detailed reconstruction of theorchestration and then tried to mimic what the sound quality is on the film for theconcert stage.” With the reconstruction half of the project underway, time was of the essence forChace Audio and Audionamix.

ExtractionMeanwhile, 3,000 miles away at Chace Audio, Bob Heiber was trying to solve the

problem of having a live orchestra to picture show of West Side Story without anyexisting mixing stems. He knew that the orchestra would somehow need to beextracted from the only existing composite mix but he was not impressed with thehistory of previous extractions. “Prior to the West Side Story screening, the methodof removing orchestras from soundtracks has really been referred to as ‘dip anddive.’ So you either dip around the music as best as possible or you chop it out andreplace the sound effects if you can.” A serious issue with dipping and diving is thatthere can be an extraordinary amount of orchestra bleeding in the track and if theconductor misses a beat or two, the orchestra would be off. Then, to the discomfortof the audience, two orchestras would be heard playing side by side.Heiber knew the West Side Story project deserved better. He turned to Rick Silvaand the team at Audionamix (ADX). ADX specializes in de-mixing fully mixed andmastered music into separate stems for re-spacialization and upmixing. “We hadbeen working with them and their technology for the last seven years to help themdevelop their technology. Their technology is really source separation technology.”

And what exactly is source separation technology? Rick Silva, ADX’s Vice Presidentof Production, says source separation is “pretty much what it sounds like. Thesource is anything that you’re listening to, whether it’s the mix from the radio, amix from 50 years ago that was on a record. If the individual tracks or themultitracks aren’t available or never were available, we’re able to analyze the fileonce we digitize the source. We can identify the different components or thearrangement and by identifying this arrangement and using our proprietaryalgorithms, we can start to separate those elements from the mix into their ownisolated tracks. That allows you the freedom to take a mono recording and turn itinto a stereo recording or even a 5.1 up-mix.” What ADX could provide sounded

like the perfect fit for West Side Story. “They canactually map the music in a combined track and then suck it out,” Heiber adds.Knowing that ADX had perfected their source separation technology, Heiberpresented the idea to Linder. “I said, ‘I got to tell you there’s a new technology thatcould let us take the music score out of West Side Story. On the other hand, it’s agood thing that Leonard Bernstein is dead because if I’d told him I’d taken his scoreout of West Side Story I know he’d come after me with a gun.’”

The West Side Story project proved to be a unique problem for Silva and the ADXteam. “Our challenge was different because we had to extract just the orchestra andleave the singing voices, dialogue, effects and foley intact. So up to that point I don’tthink we have done anything that complex. I would say it’s the first time we usedour technology on this type of project.” Heiber and his team at Chace prepared allthe materials, isolated all the music, and sent everything out for the ADX team towork their magic. All they could do now was wait and see.

So in December of 2010, ADX, confident yet still taking a leap of faith, did theirfirst test on the beloved song “America,” “which as you know is an incredibly overthe top big musical number,” says Heiber, “large orchestrations, singing, vocals,vocalizations, snaps. It’s got everything in it. And we performed this test and itworked pretty darn good.”

With the success of their first test behind them, ADX upped the ante and didadditional tests on “Somewhere” and “The Jet Song” in January of 2011. Astonishedat the results, the team was confident the extraction would work. “We were allreally impressed with what they had done,” says Heiber. “We agreed that it waspossible to extract the orchestra from West Side Story and provide all the originaldialogue and vocals a cappella now for David Newman to provide brand neworchestration and live performance.”

“It was a very tricky process and we all agreed that we needed to start somewhere inMarch, at the latest,” he continues, “because we wanted to deliver the finished trackfor David to work with by the end of May, knowing that the concert was scheduledfor July.” With the first July performance at the Hollywood Bowl looming evercloser, ADX went to work in extracting the nearly 100 minutes of score from WestSide Story.

Silva’s team provided three levels of extraction for Heiber, Linder and Newman.The primary goal of the extraction was not to damage the dialogue or compromiseany of the scenes. “By providing three levels of extraction,” Silva explains, “we cangive them something really tight, meaning no music. But sometimes you mighthave 10 percent of the dialogue damaged and sometimes that’s unacceptable. Sothen we can lower that threshold and maybe put a little more music in there anduse a less tight extraction.”Heiber notes in the end Newman would be the one conducting the live

performances so he would have plenty of input. “David came in and supervised theentire final mix. When we were done, we were left with a track where we had takenall of Leonard Bernstein’s beautiful orchestra out of the mix and left it up to Davidto put it back in perfect time when he did his performance.”David Newman is no stranger to working extensively on restoration andreconstruction projects so his input was extremely valuable. Newman frequentlybrings never-performed pieces of film music to his Big Picture concerts at theHollywood Bowl. He also spent a considerable amount of time over the previousthree years reconstructing lost Jerry Goldsmith scores to be performed live by theAmerica Youth Symphony. “I made a few suggestions because you don’t have tocompletely remove the orchestra; you won’t be able to hear it with the live orchestraplaying. Sometimes they got rid of too much and affected the voices too much. Sothey really concentrated on getting the clearest vocal sound that they could and if alittle orchestra bled through, then it was fine.”In late May the extraction was complete and Chace Audio had a few short weeks toreincorporate it back into the film and do an overhaul of the dialogue mix. With theBernstein Office just wrapping up the reconstruction of the score, Newman beganhis orchestra prep. “The score was all streamered and punched and clicked and allgridded so I could synchronize the orchestra with the picture. That was the nextstep—to set up the score and make a visual for the conductor. This is going to go allover the world touring and there are going to be multiple conductors doing it.”After nine months from inception to discovery to reconstruction, it was finallyshowtime.

West Side Story Comes HomeThe West Side Story reconstruction project premiered the fully restored highdefinition picture and original six-track mix with a tremendously successfulperformance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor David Newman at theHollywood Bowl on Friday, July 8. However, the defining moment of the projectwas seeing West Side Story come home to Leonard Bernstein’s orchestra, The NewYork Philharmonic. Debuting with the Philharmonic, Newman once againconducted two sold-out nights (Sept. 7 and 8) that paid the greatest respect toBernstein’s music and brought Avery Fisher Hall to full-bodied life. Linder, as well as the rest of the team, was excited and eager to bring this project toBernstein’s home orchestra as well as the original shooting location of the film,where Lincoln Center now stands. “The New York Philharmonic has a long historyof doing crossover. They are very careful about how they approach non-standardclassical repertoire, although you could argue that Bernstein is standard classicalrepertoire because West Side Story is played in standard symphonic concerts all thetime. One of the great things about Bernstein as a composer is that he crossesgenres, everything from classical music to pop culture to film music to Broadway.[The Philharmonic has] done film concerts before but they’ve done very few, and Ihope this leads to more of these events.”With an oversize projection screen above the orchestra, the audience at AveryFisher Hall, apart from the Hollywood Bowl concert, were the first to experiencethe amazing new high definition restoration with the lost original six-track audiomix. Jerome Robbins’ choreography never looked better in the pristine restorationand Newman brought voracity out of the orchestra to perfectly complement thestar-crossed lovers. Essentially performing a two-and-a-half-hour Hollywoodscoring session in one sitting, Newman and the Philharmonic soared through theoverture and hit every beat, snap, jump, and punch, from the prologue to the tragicfinale. The reconstruction and re-orchestrations were just as vibrant and powerfulas Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal’s Oscar-winning orchestrations, giving numbers like“Mambo” and “America” true orchestral power.

All of the extensive work that Chace Audio and Audionamix put in to extracting theaudio paid off. The original Johnny Green-conducted orchestra was nowhere to beheard, except for a moment where the original track was coming out of a jukebox asdiagetic music, but that would be asking too much of Newman to conduct two

orchestras at once. If previous extractions resulted in digital artifacting oranomalies in the vocal tracks as a result of the extraction, then ADX’s newtechnology revolutionized source separation.One would expect the power of the orchestra to drown out the dialogue but thatwasn’t the case. Newman craftily kept the orchestra balanced without stifling any ofthe vocals. They played it cool, boy. Before the start of the second act, Avery Fisher Hall was aflutter with the film’soriginal crew and cast members. In what turned out to be a truly magical moment,Newman took to the podium and asked each of the attending West Side Storyalumni to take a stand. The audience gave a 10-minute ovation to the film’sproducer Walter Mirisch, co-orchestrator Sid Ramin, Russ Tamblyn, GeorgeChakiris and Marni Nixon, who provided the singing vocals for Natalie Wood’sMaria.Asked prior to the concert if he was nervous about conducting the New YorkPhilharmonic, Newman quipped, “I’m always nervous. Doesn’t matter what I’mdoing. I’m nervous getting up in the morning.” If Newman was nervous, it did notshow and the orchestra truly shined. After the concert Newman was beaming. “Itwas thrilling. I think this music is in their DNA. It was a wonderful experience.”David Newman and West Side Story’s next stop will be with the Chicago SymphonyOrchestra in November. After Chicago, West Side Story will begin its world tour in2012, making stops in Sydney in January, London’s Royal Albert Hall in June,Tokyo in September, and Melbourne in October.

The love and affection given to the West Side Story project is undeniable. Withsuch a short turnaround time for Eleonor Sandresky’s detective work, GarthSunderland’s reconstruction, Chace Audio and Audionamix’s audio extraction and

source separation, and David Newman’s passionate conducting, the project iswithout a doubt the greatest tribute one could offer to one of cinema’s beloved iconson its 50th birthday.A very special thanks to Bob Heiber, The Leonard Bernstein Office, Steve Linder,David Newman, Eleonor Sandresky and The New York Philharmonic.—FSMOYou can follow Justin on Twitter: @Justin_M_Craig.